SEATTLE – Starbucks said the aftermath of a ransomware attack on a software supplier has been affecting its ability to pay baristas and manage their schedules, the company’s spokesperson said on Nov 25.

The coffee giant said that an outage at a third-party vendor has disrupted a back-end Starbucks process that enables employee scheduling and time tracking.

The outage is not impacting its customer service, and the company was working to ensure its employees were fully paid for their hours worked with limited disruption or discrepancy, according to a Starbucks’ spokesperson.

UK-based Blue Yonder, which provides supply chain software to Starbucks and other retailers, according to the Wall Street Journal, said on Thursday that it has experienced disruptions due to a ransomware attack and it is working to fix the issue. REUTERS

WASHINGTON – Chinese state-affiliated hackers intercepted audio from the phone calls of US political figures including an unnamed campaign adviser of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported on Oct 27.

The FBI and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said on Oct 25 they were investigating unauthorised access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by people associated with China.

Trump’s campaign and the FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Post also reported the hackers were able to access unencrypted communications like text messages, of the individual.

Reuters reported on Oct 25 that Chinese hackers also targeted phones used by people affiliated with the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, were targeted, various media outlets reported last week.

The Trump campaign was made aware last week that Trump and Mr Vance were among a number of people inside and outside of government whose phone numbers were targeted through the infiltration of Verizon phone systems, the New York Times reported on Oct 25.

The Trump campaign was hacked earlier in 2024. The US Justice Department charged three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps with the hack, accusing them of trying to disrupt the Nov 5 election.

Verizon said on Oct 25 it was aware of a sophisticated attempt to target US telecoms and gather intelligence and is working with law enforcement.

Congress is also investigating and earlier this month U.S. lawmakers asked AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies to answer questions about reports Chinese hackers accessed the networks of U.S. broadband providers.

The Chinese embassy in Washington said last week it was unaware of the specific situation but said China opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber thefts in all forms. REUTERS

WASHINGTON – Members of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s family and officials from the Biden administration were among those targeted by China-linked hackers who were able to break into telecommunications company systems, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Times said State Department officials, Trump family members including Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, and prominent Democrats including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer were among those targeted by the spies.

Concerns about the hacking group have grown since media reports disclosed its activities last month.

On Oct. 6, the Wall Street Journal reported that the group, nicknamed “Salt Typhoon”, had accessed the networks of broadband providers and obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping.

The State Department, as well as aides for Trump family members, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions. The White House, the National Security Agency, and the cybersecurity watchdog agency CISA did not immediately return messages. A Schumer aide did not immediately reply to an email. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an email, although Beijing routinely denies being behind cyberespionage campaigns. REUTERS

LONDON – Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) is facing 101 phone-hacking lawsuits from public figures including actors Kate Winslet, Sean Bean and Gillian Anderson and the estate of late Australian cricketer Shane Warne, London’s High Court heard on Nov 20.

The publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People tabloids – which is owned by Reach – has been entangled in litigation for more than a decade over alleged phone hacking and other unlawful information gathering.

MGN had accepted that some unlawful information gathering took place at its newspapers in the early 2000s, before Prince Harry and three others went to trial in 2023.

Harry, the younger son of King Charles, was awarded £140,600 (around S$238,000) after London’s High Court ruled the prince had been targeted by MGN journalists – the biggest win yet in his “mission” to purge the British press.

He accepted substantial damages from MGN to settle the remainder of his lawsuit, but vowed his mission would continue and a trial of his separate case against Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm is due to begin in January.

When Harry largely won his case in December 2023, Reach also claimed victory as two other claimants’ cases were rejected as having been brought too late.

The company said the ruling meant cases brought after October 2020 were “likely to be dismissed other than where exceptional circumstances apply”.

MGN is, however, currently facing a total of 101 lawsuits brought by a number of people, including Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, the claimants’ lawyers said at a hearing on Nov 20.

The publisher asked for a trial to be heard in late 2025 to decide whether a sample of the 101 cases were brought too late, arguing it would likely prompt a settlement of the cases.

Judge Timothy Fancourt ruled that such a trial would accelerate other cases being resolved and said it was likely to take place in November 2025. REUTERS

WASHINGTON – China-linked hackers have intercepted surveillance data intended for American law enforcement agencies after breaking in to an unspecified number of telecom companies, US authorities said on Nov 13.

The hackers compromised the networks of “multiple telecommunications companies” and stole US customer call records and communications from “a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or political activity”, according to a joint statement released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the US cyber watchdog agency CISA.

The two agencies said the hackers also copied “certain information that was subject to US law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders”.

The statement gave few other details, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency immediately responded to a request for comment.

The FBI declined to comment.

The announcement confirms the broad outlines of previous media reports, especially those in the Wall Street Journal, that Chinese hackers were feared to have opened a back door into the interception systems used by law enforcement to surveil Americans’ telecommunications.

That, combined with reports that Chinese hackers had targeted telephones belonging to then-presidential and vice-presidential candidates Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, along with other senior political figures, raised widespread concern over the security of America’s telecommunications infrastructure.

The matter is already slated for investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Safety Review Board, which was set up to analyse the causes and fallout of major digital security incidents.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Beijing routinely denies US hacking allegations. REUTERS